Final Blog Summarising What Has Been Discussed Throughout

Blog post #7

Hello again, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for having a look at my previous blog post, I hope it was an insightful read and you are now more knowledgeable on the matter. My last blog post looked at young people’s perceptions of what has been discussed in previous posts. This blog post will be a summary of the topics that have been discussed in every other blog post.

This will be my final blog post as college is coming to an end and I will be moving on to bigger and better things at university. Therefore, this blog post will summarise the main points from each blog post.

Firstly, social media can influence what young people spend their money on hugely. People post pictures and videos of their flashy lifestyles which can lead to young people sometimes putting themselves in debt to live the same lives of the people they see on Instagram. Young people may get down about not owning these materialistic things and living these luxurious lives, things may not be what they seem as they are through a mobile or computer screen. The term “money can’t buy you happiness” couldn’t be more accurate. There are many things in this world that money simply cannot buy, like manners, love and trust.

Secondly, thanks to the very high and mostly unrealistic body expectations that society expects, young people have become so focused on the fact that they must look good in every picture they take to gain the approval of their online peers (followers) and to gain lots of attention and popularity (likes). This includes comparing themselves to the hundreds of other girls and guys they see on their news feed who have “the perfect figure” or “the perfect look.” Terms like these make young people feel as though that they must look like these people who are branded as these terms, to fit in or become popular, for example. Therefore if these young people don’t look like the people who are branded as these terms, then they use filters and Photoshop on their photos to dramatically change the way they look online in order to gain approval, popularity etc. This is a very bad thing as they forget what's more important in life, like making themselves happy, instead of trying to please others.

Thirdly, thanks to the vast development of technology, face to face bullying has become something of the past. People have now moved on to bullying through technology. This can be done through the use of phones and the internet. This allows a person to bully another person at any time of the day, especially through social media because it is always active. To prevent this, many schools now train pupils in e-safety and ‘netiquette’ to equip them with the vital tools that they will need to understand the harsh reality of the digital world. An effective technique to stop cyber-bullying is to block bullying behaviour online by clicking the report button on social media sites.

Fourthly, because social media is so constant, young people feel the need to always be online just in case they miss something important that involves their friends. This can lead to mental health problems like anxiety as young people feel as though they must reply instantly to friends online through instant messaging and group chats. Young people need to realise that not constantly being online isn’t the end of the world and that there are a lot more important things that they should be focusing on instead, like hobbies, interests and school work/exams. Social media can ruin a young person’s happiness.

Lastly, the primary research that was carried out showed that young people are aware of the negatives and positives of social media, but still think that social media is a positive thing in terms of how it reflects on their lives.

Overall, social media is a great communications tool which makes it easier for people to keep in contact with their friends and relatives, however there are a lot of problems with social media that can reflect on young people very badly.

I hope the last couple of months have been insightful for you and you now have a bit more of an understanding of how social media can have an impact on young people’s lives.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

Goodbye for now...

Young People's Perceptions Of How Social Media Has An Impact On Their Lives

 Blog post #6

Long time no see, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for having a read of my previous blog post, I hope it was insightful and you are now more knowledgeable on the matter. My previous blog post discussed how social media can have an impact on young people’s mental health, in terms of depression, anxiety and in some worse cases, suicide.

This blog post will take a bit of a different approach, and will look at young people’s perceptions of what has been discussed in previous posts. To find out this information (which will be a part of my industrial investigation project) I carried out primary research which involved interviewing my guidance tutor in my old school. She was very helpful with answering the questions I asked and went a step further by asking pupils in the school what they thought as well. So I thought that was a good thing to write about - to show a bit of a different perspective rather than from an adult’s point of view.  

One of the questions that my school guidance tutor asked pupils to help her answer was if they think social media has an impact on they spend money on. The pupils thought that social media does have an impact on what they buy, and gave answers such as:

• Online fashion trends influences their purchases.
• Online make up tutorials allows them to see what the end result looks like before they buy the product, so if it looks good, they are more likely to buy it.
• They follow celebrities which show professional photos giving an idea of what clothes they would like to buy which are similar in appearance.

Another one of the questions was if they think social media has an impact on how they feel about themselves/the way they look. The pupils thought that social media does have an impact on this, and gave answer such as:

• They compare themselves to models/celebrities that are perceived to be perfect – how they look and how they dress. This makes some of them feel insecure about their appearance.
• The current trends e.g. the way make-up is applied or how eyebrows and nails are worn which are seen through adverts online influences the way the young girls want to look.
• They take so many selfies, looking for the perfect image before sending it to gain approval from people/look like others online.

The next question was if they think social media has an impact on young people’s mental health. The pupils thought that social media does have an impact on this, and gave answer such as:

• They feel the need/under pressure to follow others online.
• They feel the need to respond immediately to group chats, they know that others can see when a comment has been read and therefore there needs to be an immediate response.
• They panic when they don’t have their phones on them. This leads to anxiety.
• They think that people post all the good things that happen and the best, happiest photos are having so much fun all the time which isn’t always true. However this makes still them feel depressed that their lives aren’t like this.

The last question asked was if they think social media is a positive or negative thing in terms of how it reflects on them. The pupils gave mixed opinions, but overall thought that social media is a positive thing. They gave positive answers such as:

• It allows them to speak to friends when not with them.
• It lets them contact family who are far away.
• It offers a lot of support for many communities – e.g. LGBTQ and friendships can be established.
• It can make new friends if socially awkward.
• Learn about what’s going on in the world.

They gave negative answers such as:

•  People are more likely to say something online that they wouldn’t say in person.
• It can reduce sleep.
• It makes life harder for some people who are subject to bullying behaviours.

Overall, lots of really useful information was gathered from the primary research carried out, and it shows that young people are aware of the negatives and positives of social media, but still think that social media is a positive thing in terms of how it reflects on their lives.

Do you any have questions regarding this blog post? Then let me know in the comments section. I look forward to seeing what you have to say on the matter.

Stay tuned for my next blog post.

As always, until next time…

How Social Media Can Have An Impact On Young People's Mental Health

Blog post #5

Hello once again, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for having a read of my previous blog post, I hope you enjoyed reading it and it was insightful. My previous blog post discussed how social media can have an impact on how young people are treated online, for example, the way social media makes it easy to bully young people every day and night (cyber-bullying) and how this badly affects them.

This blog post will be about how social media can have an impact on young people’s mental health. Now don’t get me wrong, social media is a great communication tool which allows people to connect with other people all over the world. However, social media does have some negatives, in terms of how it affects young people. Social media affects certain aspects of young people’s lives including: their sleep, their well-being, and their growth.

Young people’s sleep

It is a well-known fact that a lot of young people are on social media 24/7. Whether it’s on their mobile devices, laptop or tablet, young people are constantly on either: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp or Snapchat. Even when their go to bed, they are still online chatting to friends, scrolling through newsfeeds, checking Snapchat stories etc., until the early hours of the morning. This can have a very bad impact on their sleep which is needed to focus on tasks during the day. People, young people especially need approximately eight hours sleep to properly function throughout the day. So what can be done? Well, to make sure young people aren’t on social media or on their phones all night, parents can either take away their devices to stop them from going online or turn off the Wi-Fi after a certain time at night. This will hopefully make young people get the right amount of sleep they need daily.

Young people’s well-being

Because social media is so constant, young people feel the need to always be online just in case they miss something important that involves their friends. This can lead to mental health problems like anxiety as young people feel as though they must reply instantly to friends online through instant messaging and group chats. Young people need to realise that not constantly being online isn’t the end of the world and that there are a lot more important things that they should be focusing on instead, like hobbies, interests and school work/exams. Social media can ruin a young person’s happiness.

Young people’s growth

Social media can affect the way young people grow as individuals. Social media aspects that have already been covered like cyber-bullying and exposure to luxury lifestyles are one of many reasons that affects young people’s growth. It can lead to serious depression and sometimes even more serious cases, suicide.

Overall, social media is a great communications tool, however it needs to be used carefully and occasionally to make sure young people get the right amount of sleep they need to function daily, maintain a happy lifestyle and grow naturally.

Do you any have questions regarding this blog post? Then let me know in the comments section. I look forward to seeing what you have to say on the matter.

Stay tuned for my next blog post.

Until next time…

How Social Media Can Have An Impact On How Young People Are Treated Online

Blog post #4

Hello once again, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for having a read of my previous blog post, I hope you enjoyed reading it and it was insightful. My previous blog post discussed the impact social media can have on the way young people see themselves, for example what they think of their body and the way they look compared to people they see online (Instagram).

This blog post will be about how social media can have a big impact on how young people are treated online and how they treat others online as well. This is something that many schools, adults and industries do not tolerate, and that is cyber bullying.

Due to the vast development of technology, face to face bullying has become something of the past. People have now moved on to bullying through technology. This can be done through the use of phones and the internet. This allows a person to bully another person at any time of the day, especially through social media because it is always active.

There are many forms of cyber bullying which includes: flaming, harassment, cyber stalking, denigration, masquerading, outing and exclusion.

Flaming

This involves the electronic transmission of angry or rude messages.

Harassment 

This involves repeatedly sending insulting or threatening messages.

Cyber stalking 

This involves threats of harm or intimidation.

Denigration

This is a method used to put down people or spread cruel rumours.

Masquerading 

This involves pretending to be someone else and sharing information to ruin a person’s reputation. 

Outing 

This involves revealing personal information about a person.

Exclusion 

This method is used to maliciously leave a person out of a group online, such as a chat line or a game and gang up on one individual.

All seven of these methods are an effective way of bullying someone online and need to be put to an end, as these methods can affect people very badly which can lead to serious health risks. Certain health risks such as depression, anxiety and in some even worse cases, suicide. 

(This will be discussed further in a future blog post).

Cyber bullying often takes place due to relationship difficulties, such as the break-up of a friendship or romance or envy of a peer’s success. This can lead to prejudice remarks about people’s gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability.

So what can be done to put an end to this? 

Well the most fundamental way is to attempt to prevent cyber bullying in the first place. 

This can be done by creating school e-safety policies and informing young people of informative websites that are available, for example, the NSPCC or ChildLine.

These kinds of helpline websites help lots of children around the UK who deal with abuse on and offline. 

Many schools now train pupils in e-safety and ‘netiquette’ to equip them with the vital tools that they will need to understand the harsh reality of the digital world. An effective technique to stop cyber bullying is to block bullying behaviour online by clicking the report button on social media sites.

To conclude, I will leave you with this to think about:

What else do you think can be done to prevent cyber bullying? Let me know what you think in the comments section. I look forward to finding out what you think.

Keep an eye open for my next blog post.

As always, until next time… 

How Social Media Can Have an Impact on The Way Young People Feel About Themselves

Blog post #3

Welcome back Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts! 

Thank you for taking the time to have a read of my second blog post. I hope you found it interesting and that it opened up your mind to the certain negatives of social media and how these negatives can have an impact on young people in this day and age. 

This blog post will be about how social media can have a huge impact on the way young people feel about themselves/the way they look.

Now don't get me wrong, I personally like the fact that people all over the world can express how they feel, and show their friends online, a new outfit they've recently bought or how they've got into great shape, for example. That's fine. That's not the problem here. The problem here is that there are a lot of people on social media who post pictures of 

themselves that aren't exactly untouched. This involves both men and women.

I'm pretty sure that everyone knows that most, if not all magazines tend to airbrush the models to make the women look skinnier and to make the men look stronger/more toned, and this has a bad effect on young people as they think that the way people in magazines look is the way they should look too. Well this also happens on social media as well, mainly 

on Instagram. 

Thanks to the very high and mostly unrealistic body expectations that society expects, young people have become so focused on the fact that they must look good in every picture they take to gain the approval of their online peers (followers) and to gain lots of attention and popularity (likes). This includes comparing themselves to the hundreds of other girls and guys they see on their news feed who have “the perfect figure” or “the perfect look.” Terms like these make young people feel as though that they must look like these people who are branded as these terms, to fit in or become popular, for example. Therefore if these young people don’t look like the people who are branded as these terms, then they use filters and Photoshop on their photos to dramatically change the way they look online in order to gain approval, popularity etc. This is a very bad thing as they forget what's more important in life, like making themselves happy, instead of trying to please others. Another bad thing about this is that it can lead to serious health risks like eating disorders and depression. (This topic will be discussed in a future blog post).

There have been many news reports online of young people, especially girls, who had eating disorders because of what they saw online and mainly from the harsh comments they received from people online as well. (This topic is something that will be discussed further in a future blog post).

A solution for this is meaningful communication and understanding. The parents of these young people can educate their children by telling them that their worth is not based on

how many likes and followers that they get on social media, but how they are as a person in the real world and how they feel about themselves as well. Another method could be to make a group online where young people can share their thoughts and feelings on social media’s harsh reality with each other. This sort of thing will make young people feel less alone about how they feel about social media superficial society.

Overall, social media is a very useful tool for communicating online with friends, family and businesses. However it can be used to make young people feel bad about the way they look which needs to be stopped.

To conclude, I will leave you with this:

Do you agree or disagree with what has been discussed? And what do you think can be done to change this?

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post.

Until next time...

How Social Media Has An Impact On What Young People Buy

Blog post #2

Hello again, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for checking out my first blog post. My last blog post was an introduction to my blog and what it will involve over the next couple of months. This one will talk about the first aspect of social media that has an impact on young people’s lives, and that is how social media has an impact on what young people spend their money on.

One of the big problems of social media is that because a lot of people post pictures and videos of their flashy lifestyles, it can lead to young people sometimes putting themselves in debt to live the same lives of the people they see on Instagram, and have all the flashy items they own as well. Examples of this are people on Instagram who have a very large amount of followers, whether they’re reality stars or social media famous, they post pictures of their luxurious lives which makes normal, average working people feel less adequate to them and therefore try and do everything they can to make their lives the same.

Unfortunately this can, like I said previously, lead to a lot of debt and trouble because they realistically can’t afford the flashy cars and watches and stay in expensive, luxury hotels like the people they see on social media. This sort of desire to be rich and famous can lead to serious mental health problems like depression and stress. (These topics will be covered in the further detail in a future blog post).

Although normal, average working people may get down about not owning these materialistic things and living these luxurious lives, things may not be what they seem as they are through a phone or computer screen. The reality of some cases of the people who post pictures and videos of their luxurious items is that they may be portraying a rich lifestyle to gain followers and popularity, whereas in real life they are just the same as many other people in the world - a normal, average-working Joe.

These people want to make others think that they are rich, famous and happier than ever, happier than them even, because they have expensive things and live expensive lifestyles just to gain popularity from something that isn’t real in the first place. They think by doing this, they will gain some sort of happiness out of their lives, but the fact of the matter is that being, pretending or wanting to be a materialistic person doesn’t make you a happier or better person. The term “money can’t buy you happiness” couldn’t be more accurate. There are many things in this world that money simply cannot buy, like manners, love and trust. These are just a small amount of many reasons why money can’t buy you happiness, and which are what people who want to be the same as the people they see on social media should come to realise.

To conclude, I will leave you with this to think about.

Do you think money can buy someone happiness? Or do you agree with my opinion? Let me know what you think in the comment section.

As always, stay tuned for my next blog post.

Until next time...

Introduction To My Blog

Blog post #1

Hello Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for checking out my blog! First of all, let me introduce myself.

My name is Daniel Stewart Browne, I am 20 years old and I am a second year Advertising and PR Student and North East Scotland College. I have moved around quite a bit. I was born in Bratislava, Slovakia in December, 1996 and lived there for a year. Then I moved to Worcestershire, England and lived there for roughly ten years and then finally, I moved to Aberdeen, Scotland which is where I am now currently living. I live with my Mum called Michelle, my Dad called Neil and my older sister called Nicole. I don’t have any pets, but I used to have a guinea pig called Sandy. I am an avid: skier, golfer and I play tennis and basketball. I currently play for the adult tennis team at my local tennis club and I used to play for the junior golf team at my home golf club. I enjoy spending time with friends and listening to music. After college, I am hoping to move onto university which will give me the tools I need to get a foot in the door in the creative industry.

The reason I am starting this blog is because for one of my college course assessments, I have been given the task to carry out an investigation into a certain aspect of an organisation’s marketing activity. This will enable me to compare the evidence against accepted theory and draw suitable conclusions and recommendations. To start my investigation, I must first of all prepare a written report which clearly outlines my proposals for my investigation. I am looking forward to carrying out this project as it sounds very interesting and will be useful for similar projects at university.

What I what want to find out is how social media displays a “perfect world”, and how that impacts on young people. The main reason for this is to show people that although social media has many advantages, there are also many disadvantages of social media which can have a serious impact on young people.

There’s no doubt in almost everyone’s mind that social media is a very useful tool to have access to. It allows people to: communicate easily and keep in contact with friends and family online, post photos and videos of what they do during their lives, create new businesses and opportunities and meet people online all around the world. However, social media can be used very negatively. With the help of social media, people can make other people feel bad about themselves for no apparent reason and this leads to further cyber-bullying, and also, people can hack into others people’s accounts and post as that person which can cause some serious problems online and offline as well.

Therefore, for the next couple of months I will be posting a new post every fortnight which will involve different aspects of young people’s lives that are affected by social media.

Stay tuned for my next blog post…